‘Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gormé: Memories of My Mom & Dad’
PBS
Starting December 2 

In the early ’80s, at the height of the punk rock era, I had a jazz show on WNYU that was broadcast from the heart of Washington Square, a few blocks from CBGB, the true ground zero for new wave rock. On the radio station’s main bulletin board, I remember some wiseguy tacked up a vintage Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé album jacket — it was 1964’s “It’s Us Again.” Nearly everybody at the station had either a mohawk or an odd piercing, and Steve and Eydie were held up as objects of affectionate ridicule, hopelessly dated icons of a past that seemed beyond the pale of time, only existing to be chuckled at by punk hipsters.

I was already a fan, though, having grown up with the Lawrences on “The Carol Burnett Show,” not to mention “The Tonight Show” and other talk and variety programs. Although I wouldn’t actually meet the two for another decade, I could tell from seeing them banter with Johnny Carson and Dean Martin that they had enough of a sense of humor about themselves that they wouldn’t care if a bunch of Greenwich Village skinheads regarded them as quaint.

Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé were so hamish, to use a Yiddish word that Sidney Leibowitz and Edith Gormézano would have understood before taking their stage names, that they never took themselves all that seriously. The downside, though, was that because of this, virtually no one else did either. Thus it’s taken this long — Gormé died 10 years ago and Mr. Lawrence announced his retirement shortly prior to the pandemic — for there to be any kind of serious retrospective or collection of their work.

Happily, a PBS compilation of their best TV performances has arrived, hosted by their son David Lawrence — hence the title, “Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gormé: Memories of My Mom & Dad.” It’s accompanied by a deluxe package containing four CDs.

These days, we’re fond of pointing out how such-and-such a pop star has taken advantage of social media, especially YouTube. Mr. Lawrence and Gormé, who met in the Brill Building even before they both became singing regulars on “The Steve Allen Show” in 1954 — at ages 19 and 26, respectively — were also masters of new technology. They could have hardly sustained their individual and joint careers without the long-playing album format and especially television, and from the beginning they knew how to perform for the camera as much as the microphone. Occasionally they hosted their own shows, but the two were nearly omnipresent guests on “Ed Sullivan,” “The Hollywood Palace,” “The Kraft Music Hall,” “The Garry Moore Show,” and many other programs.

They primarily sang what we now call the Great American Songbook, but on both ends of their careers they sang a lot of contemporary pop music; Mr. Lawrence’s first hits were jukebox-style and malt-shop numbers like “Speedo,” and even before that, Gormé had toured with Tex Beneke and his Orchestra. They were straight down the middle, all-purpose singers, and it helped them — but possibly ultimately hurt — that they were so versatile.  

Gormé’s biggest early influence was Sarah Vaughan, and you can see how she also connected to both Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, particularly in the area of big, rafter-shaking torch songs about men who got away. You can see as much in her exquisite performances of “If He Walked Into My Life” from “Mame” and Burt Bacharach’s “A House is not a Home.”  

Gormé enjoyed a whole other career in the Spanish-speaking world — that was one of many languages heard in her Bronx Sephardim household growing up — and the PBS special includes both “Sabor a Mi” with the Trio Los Panchos and a gag version of her Brazilian-inspired hit, “Blame it on the Bossa Nova.”

Mr. Lawrence was a post-Sinatra swinging lover — as evidenced on “A Room Without Windows” from his Broadway success, “What Makes Sammy Run?” He also had a taste for foreign songs, such as “What Now My Love?,” “Portrait of My Love,” and “More,” and even quasi-operatic material. My single favorite performance by Mr. Lawrence may be “Where Can I Go?,” a powerfully spiritual song of Israel that draws on his early training in the synagogues of Brooklyn. Who says you can’t croon in Hebrew? (It’s not in the special, alas, but it is viewable here, and it is included in the CD package.)

Steve and Eydie were even more powerful together; after they married in 1957, they effectively sustained three simultaneous careers, two solos and one as a duo. Their duets were driven by perfect pitch and flawless time, and they could uplift any song with inspired harmony.  

Their signature “This Could Be the Start of Something Big,” by longtime boss Steve Allen, has the two of them slipping into some very baroque counterpoint so easily that you don’t even notice. They’re perky and cute on “Darn It Baby, That’s Love,” and then they turn around and make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on “Sunrise, Sunset.” 

They both were artists of incredible heart — David Lawrence accurately describes his father’s voice as a “warm baritone” — and humor. In the special, Carol Burnett relates how modern audiences viewing the sketches on her show without benefit of the numbers, which in itself is a tragedy, immediately assume that Mr. Lawrence was a full-time comic actor. In both music and comedy, their timing was perfect.

It does seem like it’s taken a long time for this special, and the attendant package, to get here, but better late than never and kudos to David Lawrence and producer Jim Pierson for doing it. Yes, it’s true that it was worth waiting for, but the larger truth is that I’ve hardly been just sitting around and waiting: I’ve been enjoying their unique artistry all along.

A few months ago, before I knew that this special was in the works, I put together a three-hour sampling of my favorite tracks by Steve Lawrence for my radio show on KSDS San Diego. You can hear that episode of the show here.